Chaos can't distill beauty of Yosemite

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, December 17, 1997

YOSEMITE VALLEY - Times have never been stranger than right now at Yosemite. On one hand, the future operation of the park is largely in chaos. On the other, it has rarely been so beautiful, quiet and tranquil than since last Sunday's first big snowfall of the season.

Chaos? The park doesn't even have an operation established to take campground reservations for next spring and summer. . . . Passionate letters of all ilk are flooding in over the proposal to rid the valley of most cars, with the public comment period set to end Feb. 23. . . . The Yosemite Valley Chevron station has been closed, and now that the tourists are gone, the word is that it will be removed as part of the reconstruction of the flood-damaged Yosemite Lodge area.

Yet tranquility reigns. Everything is pristine and quiet, and with a carpet of fresh snow the magnificent valley seems more stellar than ever. When you compare it to a summer day with 25,000 people in an area of five square miles, it seems like a miracle.

In the high country, 5 feet of snow has closed the roads through Tioga Pass and to Glacier Point, and the Badger Pass Ski Area has opened on weekends for the winter. A handful of cross-country skiers are making the ambitious trip from Badger Pass to Glacier Point and, amid the fresh snow and 25-degree temperatures, are getting perhaps the most wondrous view in North America, overlooking Half Dome, Tenaya Canyon and Yosemite Valley - without another soul around.

"Yosemite in the winter and early spring is a quiet, magical place," said Stanley Albright, the new superintendent for the park. "Imagine the valley on a busy summer day or holiday weekend, teeming with cars and people, with no place to park."

Or, he might add, no place to camp.

The first pressing bugaboo for Yosemite is getting a campground reservation service on-line. Ever since Destinet was given the heave-ho this fall, allegedly for withholding funds due the park, campsites have been taken on a first-come, first-served basis (though rangers honored reservations paid for before the Destinet bust).

Typically, mid-December is when activity starts heating up for campsite reservations. That's because reservations are usually available six months in advance - that is, people make reservations now for camping in mid-June, just as school is out for summer. But what you have now is zilch.

It could become much worse. It could give rise to a return of the nightmares of the mid-1980s, when Yosemite camps were operated on a 100-percent first-come, first-serve basis. The result were lines of 100 cars and more at campgrounds, waiting for people to leave their campsites. When a campsite opened up, there was the intense competition of something like 10 kids racing for one cookie, a lot of swearing, even fistfights. I've had several private conversations with park staff about this, and nobody in the park wants a return to this scenario . . . still, nothing has been done yet to avoid it.

In a parallel issue, the Forest Service is in a similar position, in the process of changing its campground reservation service, officially when the current contract expires Jan. 15. Yet for the time being, the public is being left completely in the lurch: The Forest Service does not even know what campground reservation phone number will be used as of Jan. 16, when people will be calling for mid-July reservations. Meanwhile, California State Parks is also changing its reservation service this winter, but since it owns the phone number used for reservations, there will be no disruption of service to the public.

In Yosemite, the big story, of course, has been the proposal to rid the valley of cars. Albright strongly supports such an initiative.

Given that, the real debate is likely over what is the best way to get the cars out of Yosemite Valley, not whether or not to establish such a program.

Or you could always ask: "If you can't even set up a campground reservation service, how do you expect to pull off getting the cars out of the valley?" So far, there's no answer.

Or you could just watch the big snowflakes settle on the valley floor, soak in this incredible scene, and picture what John Muir would tell the government to do.&lt;

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.